


When I was Older

by julia_wicker_the_goddess



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Shipwrecks, medic Octavia, sailor Raven
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 08:01:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28721802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julia_wicker_the_goddess/pseuds/julia_wicker_the_goddess
Summary: Raven and Octavia get stranded in the middle of the Pacific Ocean after a storm wrecks their boat. Will they make it to shore?
Relationships: Clarke Griffin/Lexa, Octavia Blake/Raven Reyes
Comments: 5
Kudos: 15





	When I was Older

**Author's Note:**

> Heavily based off of Adrift. I’d highly recommend you NOT watch that movie or look it up before this fic is over or you’ll get spoilers.
> 
> Fic and chapter titles based on When I Was Older by Billie Eilish.
> 
> Content warning: graphic medical descriptions.

Octavia wakes up choking, flailing in water. She’s resting on something solid. Her head hurts and her vision is blurry. There’s water everywhere, but it’s dim and difficult to see. She finally realizes she’s in the hull of the boat she and Raven have been sailing for nearly 3 weeks. It must have flooded. She gets up, pushing through the water and random things both floating and sunken to try to make it to the ladder up to the deck. Suddenly she feels a sharp pain in her foot and she cries out, falling into the water, her head plunging under. She comes up again a moment later, sputtering and coughing. 

“Ow, fuck!” She holds her foot carefully until she can stop shuddering enough to keep moving. It’s too dim to see where she’s walking under the water, but she has to walk on the tiptoe of her right foot as she continues her way. She’s barefoot, has been almost the whole journey. She finally gets to the ladder and climbs it, wincing as she steps on the rungs with the ball of her injured foot. Climbing to the top, she turns the lock of the hatch at the top and pushes. It doesn’t move. She pushes harder. It’s stuck. Or blocked.

“Shit.”

She looks around herself, trying to think of a way to get herself more leverage. Finally, she decides to climb up another wrung and get her shoulders under the door so she can push with her legs. She shakes with the effort, but after several attempts, something gives and she’s able to push the hatch open. Bright light bursts into the cabin and she squints, temporarily blinded.

“Rae, the cabin’s flooded. We’re gonna need to pump the water out,” she yells, climbing out onto the deck. Wind whips her soaked pants and flaps her rain jacket. She had put it on for the storm.  _ That’s right, there was a storm _ . She looks and realizes the things she had to push out of the way was part of the mast. 

“Rae, the mast is broken. Where are you?”

The deck isn’t big, the whole ship only 13 meters. She squints, looking among broken equipment and debris for Raven. They had both donned their rain jackets when the storm had been picking up. Octavia’s is grape purple, Raven’s burnt orange. She should be easy to spot. They had also made sure to secure themselves to the boat. As the waves had gotten bigger and bigger, they had strapped on the safety belts to themselves that were attached by rope to the boat. That way, if one of them got swept off deck, they could be found. About one and a half hours into battling the wing and waves, Raven had sent Octavia below deck to rest so she could take over later. 

“Rae, where are you?” Octavia makes her way to the stern of the yacht where the big steering wheel is. But Raven isn’t there. 

“Rae?” Octavia makes her way to the tie-off point where their safety belts had been secured. One line leads back to the hatch to the cabin where Octavia had disconnected herself when she was safely below deck. The other she follows till it leads her off the end of the boat.

“R-Raven?” Her breathing picks up. She grabs the line, pulling, yanking in armful after armful of rope till she pulls up an unfastened belt identical to the one around her own waist.

“No, no, no, no. Raven. Raven!” Octavia glances frantically around at the open water, the gentle waves tossing the boat. 

“Raven!” She searches in all directions. All she sees are waves and sky. “NOOO, RAVEN!!!” Her voice cracks with her scream and she breaks down in shuddering sobs. She realizes she’s giving wet coughs every few sobs, but doesn’t have it in her to care. Raven is gone. 

  
  


————————————————————————

_ Two years earlier _

  
  


_ Octavia is repainting a bench on the dock of the marina with her friend Clarke. They had met through the job. Clarke is from Adelaide, Australia and had moved to Tahiti a year ago. Octavia had landed here a few months ago after working on a large schooner as a medic. She hadn’t learned much about sailing from the experience as she mostly worked below deck, but spending evenings on the deck, watching the sun set on the water as the sea breeze blew was the reason she had fallen in love with being on a boat. _

_ Suddenly a vessel comes into the marina with a gorgeous Latina woman hanging off the railing.  _

_ “Hey, can you give me a hand?” _

_ Octavia raises her eyebrow and gets up, wiping paint-covered hands on her cutoff overalls before catching the rope the woman throws her. She ties it around the dock as the woman jumps off her boat and attaches another rope to the dock.  _

_ “Thanks.” _

_ “No problem. What’s your boat name mean? Mayaluga?” _

_ “It’s Swazi. It means ‘one who crosses the horizon.’” _

_ “Cool.” _

_ “I’m Raven.” _

_ “Octavia.” She feels awkward and unsure if this woman is just being nice or if she’s flirting with her. _

_ “Well, I’ve got a bench to paint.” _

_ “Maybe I’ll see you around.” _

_ “Probably, if you’re in the area.” _

_ “Then I'll make sure to be in the area.” The woman smiles and Octavia melts inwardly. As Raven leaves the dock, she hopes they’ll get to speak again.  _

  
  
  


————————————————————————

Present Day

  
  
  
  
  


She cries and wails and rocks herself for what must be hours. The love of her life is gone, presumably drowned. She’s stranded out here by herself. After a few hours, when the crying tapers off and she’s left feeling dehydrated and exhausted, she starts to wonder if she should just jump into the water and swim away from the boat till she tires out and drowns. She doesn’t want to be rescued without Raven. She stares out at the waves, picturing herself sinking to the bottom of the ocean when her arms can’t paddle and her legs can’t kick anymore. Then suddenly, she spots it: a bump out on one of the waves. 

“What…” she murmurs to herself. She gets up, groaning at the pain in her foot and limping down the ladder to try to find the binoculars. Luckily, she spots them floating next to one of the sopping mattresses. She hangs them around her neck and quickly makes her way back up to the deck. She has to search for a minute, but she finds the object in the ocean off the stern of the boat. She lifts the binoculars and has to do a double take. It’s something bobbing up and down in the waves. Part of it is bright orange, and she sees brown hair.

“Oh my god, Raven!” 

There’s no reply and she drops her binoculars and tries to figure out the best way for her to get to Raven. 

“Hang on, baby, I’m coming!”

It’s too far to swim and not lose the boat in the process, so she has to find a way to maneuver the boat over there. The mast had smashed directly through the control panel when it had broken, so when she tries to move the rudder it won’t budge and when she tries to start the motor, there are some sparks and popping sounds, then nothing.

“Shit.”

The mast is on the deck, the metal twisted and about ⅔ of it torn off and lost to the sea. The largest sails, the spinnaker and the mainsail are gone. The jib is still there, a small triangular sail. The spinnaker pole is still in place as well. Octavia looks down at her foot, which is throbbing. Examining it closer, she realizes that the underside has a piece of broken glass in the heel and she starts shaking, feeling sick to her stomach. She lifts a hand to hold her forehead but hisses and pulls it away coated in blood and serous fluid. Now she does throw up. She decides to go below deck again and see if she can find the first aid kit. It takes some looking, but eventually she spots it floating near the waterlogged kitchen and hauls it up to the dry deck. She pulls out butterfly bandages and gauze. First, she sops up the wound on her forehead, then swipes it with an alcohol pad, which causes her to shriek unintentionally. With shaky fingers, she feels the edges of the wound so she knows how big a bandage she needs, and ends up deciding to steri-strip it and wrap it in gauze. She had been the medic on a schooner traveling in the asiatic sea. She knows her way around a bandage. Next, she turns her attention to her foot. The glass is embedded in her foot maybe an inch or a little less. She’s nervous about pulling it out, that she won’t be able to control the bleeding, but she also knows she can’t fix up the boat walking on tip toe on that foot. She sighs, trying to steady herself. Putting an ace bandage in her mouth, she pinches the glass tightly and pulls. A scream rips out of her and she sees white for a second before things come back into view and sees blood gushing from her foot.

“Shit.”

She grabs more gauze and presses it against her heal tightly, groaning in pain. She sits there for a couple of minutes before readying more steri-strips to close this wound the best she can. It’s sort of a hack job, and she wraps some gauze around it for good measure. Next, she goes down below deck and pulls a roll of duct tape out of an emergency kit on the wall. She finds rope in there too and she goes up to make the boat seaworthy. She ends up using rope and duct tape to turn the spinnaker pole into a makeshift mast and uses the jib to catch the wind. There’s a lot less momentum with only the tiny sail, but it works well enough and within an hour she’s close enough to swim out to Raven. Just in case, she connects a line to the boat and ties the other end around her waist, so she doesn’t lose her vessel. Swimming feels horrific on her cut foot and the salt water stings in her head wound, but after spending a moment trying to remember how to breathe, she swims toward Raven. She calls a couple of times to her, but she doesn’t answer. When she reaches her, she sees that Raven has her life jacket out in front of her like a kick board and is resting her head on it. 

“R-Rae?” She’s terrified that her girlfriend is dead. When she finally reaches her though, she sees the rising and falling of Raven’s back with her breaths.

“Rae, oh my god.”

There’s a pathetic whimper from the woman and Octavia puts an arm around her under her armpits and pulls her so she can float on her back, tucking the life jacket under her head. Raven’s face is a sickly yellow color and her lips are purple with cold, but her eyes are open a bit. 

“Hey love, you’re okay.”

She swims them slowly back to the boat. Raven’s shivering body drags her down and she’s a little worried she’s not going to be able to keep them afloat. Her head goes under water more and more often as they near the boat till finally she’s grabbing onto the ladder and sputtering for breath. 

“Okay, let’s get you up there.” 

She’s not really sure how she’s going to get Raven’s limp form up the ladder and onto the boat. Finally, she decides to help Raven grab onto the ladder a few wrings up, get herself into the boat, and then pull Raven up by her arms. The woman lets out a tiny cry that sends chills down Octavia’s spine but she ignores it till she’s safely in the boat with her. She hugs Raven’s cold limbs to herself even as Raven cries out again.

“It’s okay. We’re okay.” She finally talks herself into letting go of Raven to look at her and her face is ashen.

“Alright, what’s wrong? What doesn’t feel good?”

“M-my leg,” she chokes out. Octavia looks down and sees that something is  _ very  _ wrong with Raven’s leg. Like,  _ bones sticking out  _ levels of wrong. 

“Okay,” she says in a voice much calmer than she feels. “We can splint that up no problem. What else?”

“Ribs.”

Octavia lifts her shirt up and sees dark purple, near-black bruising and one side of Raven’s chest sunken in. 

“Okay. You’re gonna be fine. I’m gonna grab some supplies to make you a splint.”

Raven nods and shuts her eyes while Octavia hurries down to the cabin to find something that will work. She ends up picking utensils floating near the kitchen. she also finds some bottles of water floating because of the air packed into them. She brings them back up and grabs the ace bandage from the first aid kit. She splints the leg efficiently, then offers Raven some water. She can’t help but notice Raven’s still sallow skin and purple lips.

“Are you cold, baby?”

“A little.”

There’s nothing dry on the boat and though the sun is shining, there’s enough wind on the water to make it feel chilly when you’re wet. Octavia finally decides to strip off Raven’s orange rain jacket and shirt to try to warm her up with her body heat. She’s careful not to jostle the woman’s injured body, but Raven still shudders with pain at having to use her ab muscles to help hold herself up as the clothes come off. Octavia then strips off her own shirt and lays down next to her, pressing her front into Raven’s back and wrapping her arms around her, rubbing her arms vigorously to try to warm them up. 

“I thought you were dead,” Octavia says.

Raven nods. She turns her head to look back at Octavia.

“You’re going to have to navigate us out of this one, hon. I’m pretty much out of commission.”

“But, but you’re the sailor. I’m just the trophy girlfriend on this trip.”

“If the trophy girlfriend could Macgyver that,” she says, nodding toward the makeshift sail Octavia had slapped together, “she can get us to safety.”

Octavia presses herself tighter to Raven, holding her close and hoping she’s right. 

**Author's Note:**

> Leave me a comment and let me know what you think of the fic so far.


End file.
